


Xavier's Camp for Gifted Social Misfits

by dasylirion



Category: X-Men - All Media Types
Genre: Alternate Universe - Gender Changes, Alternate Universe - Summer Camp, Character Study, F/F, Freeform (Not-Fic), Pining, Some Humor
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-02-09
Updated: 2019-02-09
Packaged: 2019-10-25 09:24:14
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,035
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17722523
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/dasylirion/pseuds/dasylirion
Summary: Wherein beleaguered Camp Director Charlotte "Professor" Xavier has to deal with lovestruck Junior Counselors, a Survival expert who keeps getting stabbed/attacked by wildlife, glitter, small children, and an arguably unrequited crush on her second-in-command.Light-hearted, character-driven, based on experience, and containing less than 2% plot thus far.





	Xavier's Camp for Gifted Social Misfits

**Author's Note:**

> Hi, folks - I'll update as inspiration strikes, but please enjoy this very silly trials-and-tribulations AU! Written to make myself smile; figured I would share. (Also, Bishop has a van full of campers off-screen having the kind of hilarious TBD shenanigans that will produce _so much paperwork_ when she and her campers get back.)

Lottie doodles little crosshatched Xs in the margins of her dog-eared camp brochure. Good Lord, why had she thought it was a good idea to schedule Pirate Princesses and Enchanted Mermaids in the same week? There were only so many six-year-olds any sane person could handle at a time, and the two units at 26 girls apiece are driving her slowly insane. She cuddles deeper into her cardigan - the camp director's office shares a building with the Infirmary, and usually hovers at 62 degrees even when it's ninety outside. She should really be outside with her camera. Thus far, the Camp Newsletter for the week contains eighteen pictures of the Survivor unit post-pudding fight, but no pictures of teenagers on horses or tiny girls with foam swords yet. Missed opportunities abound.

"Charlotte!" someone bellows, and her office door is flung open. 

"'Professor,'" Lottie corrects with a sigh. "Camp names are to be used at all times, 'Magneto.' It's mentioned in the staff manual at least eight times."

Erika looks even more annoyed by this reminder. Her hair is escaping her baseball cap, and her shoulders are still peeling from last week's sailing-related sunburn. "Professor," she bites out, German accent always more audible when she's annoyed. "Junior Counselor 'Jubilee' has created a glitter explosion in the arts and crafts room. One of the teenage equestriennes made a homophobic remark, and now there's a fight on the lawn. Lots of hair-pulling and shrieking. Very homoerotic, actually."

Lottie climbs to her feet. "And Jubilee couldn't defuse the situation? YOU couldn't defuse the situation?"

"Last time I broke up a fight, I made all the participants cry. You said I wasn't allowed to do any conflict resolution for two weeks," says Erika, smugly.

Lottie grumbles under her breath and flings open her office door. Sure enough, there are two brightly-colored people rolling around in the grass by the Arts room. She stomps over and blows her whistle at them. "Stop this immediately! We use our WORDS to solve conflicts, not - Jubilee?"

"She started it!" yells the tinier of the two girls. Her black hair is caked with glitter, and her face is streaked with purple, except for around the eyes. The blonde girl on top of her slumps down and tries to hide her face in Jubilee's shoulder. 

"I did not ask who started it," says Lottie, baffled. "I asked you to stop tussling with - is that a camper?"

The other girl rolls off Jubilee. She keeps her eyes scrunched tight, pink glitter failing to hide her blush. "Ms. Dean," concludes Lottie. Great. One of three campers this week whose parents have a public relations team on speed dial. "I am... quite disappointed in you both." 

Karolina's eyes scrunch tighter. "Sorry, Professor. Um." She peeks up at Lottie. "If I accept full punishment for this, can we just forget it happened and never tell my parents?"

"One of my staff in a physical altercation with a camper? I will have to file -" Erika stops her with a hand to her shoulder.

"Tell you what, Karolina," Erika says, in a very low voice. Lottie leans a little closer to hear her. "No more calling anyone 'lesbos' or teasing Jubilee or making a fuss about the communal showers, and we'll leave you to come out to your parents whenever you're ready. Deal?"

Lottie stares at Erika. Erika ignores her, staring down at the blonde girl in the grass. "Okay," whispers Karolina.

"Want me to yell at you in German in front of your bunkmates, so they don't think too hard about you rolling around in the grass with another girl?"

"Yes, please," breathes Karolina, rolling to her feet and assuming a chastised expression. 

"Great compromise. Lottie, help Jubilee get cleaned up," Erika orders. 

That's how Lottie finds herself holding a hose and helping Jubilee sluice glitter out of her hair, while behind her the Assistant Camp Director yells what sounds like instructions for changing the oil in a motorcycle at a teenage celebutant. 

"I'm supposed to be in charge here," she muses. Jubilee giggles at her and gets water up her own nose.

\----- 

Rogue gets into one of her moods where she can't bear to be around children - "They keep touching me, Professor!" which, Lottie thinks, really ought to have been considered by Rogue before applying for this job. Getting touched by small children comes with the territory, unless maybe you're the Astronomy instructor, but it's honestly 50/50 whether that's because it's the least physical contact possible or because it's taught by Storm and no one would dare. So Lottie moves Rogue out to rejoin the barn staff, and that means Penny Parker - "Spider-girl," after that incident with the tarantula during training week - has to move back in to the Pirate Princesses unit. Penny's great with the kids, and she lets them climb all over her, but she and Torch get hyper-competitive, which means Lottie has probably two more days before Lead Counselor Sue Richards is back in her office with a level look and a numbered list of calm, mature, logical reasons why Lottie is a dumbass.

\----- 

Logan's survival class is two hours overdue for their check-in. Just as Lottie is panicking, Theresa Cassidy - who should not have the radio, as she is twelve - calls in to say that they're fine, that Miss Logan is only a little bit impaled, and could she please send the hay ride tractor to pick them up at these coordinates because Miss Logan is heavy, over? 

Lottie presses two fingers to her temple, right where her Logan-related headaches always start, and chirps back. "Terry, tell me where you are. Over." Terry, bless the child, starts reading off GPS coordinates. Lottie rubs her temple and waits until she finishes. "No, my dear, I meant where are you. Landmarks, camp sites, which trail - the tractor doesn't have GPS. Over." Terry sheepishly admits they're in the far corner of the North parking lot, by the water coolers, and Lottie signs off and goes to collect Beast and the tractor.

It turns out that Logan has indeed managed to drive a steel tent stake through her forearm, right between the radius and the ulna. Her campers wrapped the wound on both sides, leaving the stake right where it was, per their training. They stopped the bleeding and immobilized her arm in a sling before hiking back into radio range. However, Logan decided on her own to supplement the first aid kit's pain meds with the flask of whiskey Lottie usually pretends not to know about, so the counselor slumped against the tree is more than a little drunk.

"Yeh can just pull it out," slurs Logan. "Heh. Pull out."

"And then you'll get tetanus and die," Lottie responds, flatly. "It's the ER for you, my dear. Be more careful next time."

Lottie herds the children into the hay-filled carts hitched behind the trailer. Henrietta - Dr. Beast, Lottie's embarassingly-over-qualified Camp Nurse, with an MD and two PhDs - checks the bandages, congratulates the children, and wrestles the drunk, irritated Logan into the passenger seat of her little blue Yaris. She hands the keys off to Myrna "Angel" Worthington III, their infirmary assistant/administrative assistant/blonde office eye candy, who can be trusted within reason for this kind of thing. 

"Drive safely, Angel, and switch the music over to Johnny Cash immediately to keep her calm. I'll call ahead to the E.R. and warn them," Beast instructs, and then clambers into the haycart. "Don't sit on me, you're warm and I'm not a bean bag," Lottie hears her tell the nearest small child. It won't work; despite the scary nickname, most of the girls see through to the giant teddy bear inside Henrietta. 

Another case of someone who should have considered more thoroughly before signing on for a summer with small children, muses Lottie, starting the trailer and waving Angel off, strains of "Ghost Riders in the Sky" and Logan's gravely contra-alto drifting through the window.

\-----

Jean, nicknamed Marvel, is the Head Lifeguard. On Wednesday, she closed down the waterfront for two hours because a curious alligator swam too close to the dock. Scottie heroically jumped in the water to try to scare the alligator away; Jean hauled the sixteen-year-old back out again by the scruff of her t-shirt and radioed Lottie to re-deliver the "Self-Preservation, Camp Policies, and You!" talk. So now Scottie is grounded and stuck staffing the life-jackets-and-paddles shed for two days until she can demonstrate basic common sense again.

"She just looked so disappointed and sad that the kids were going to miss swim time," confesses Scottie. "And she did that thing - with her hands on her hips, and then she sort of sways sideways, and the curve of her hip is just - ughhhhh." She drops her head to the table, red-tinted sunglasses clunking against the wooden picnic table. 

Lottie pats her on the back. "I understand, my dear," she says. She glances over at the dock, where the six-foot-tall Titian goddess that is Jean Grey is once again commanding the attention of dozens of little girls. Even silhouetted against lake water, she's quite the sight with her hands planted on those amazing hips. Jean alternates between a yellow swimsuit that clings like a second skin, even when dry, and a green suit with a deep v-neck. Both one piece suits are cut indecently high on the sides - well past her hipbones - but the camp manual only requires "one piece swim suits with sturdy shoulder straps." It does not ban showing most of one's ass, or the extent of certain personal grooming decisions, to one's boss and subordinate, who shouldn't have been staring anyway. "I totally understand." 

There's a grumbling roar from the trail, and then Magneto - Erika - drives up with the newly repaired sailboat rudder in the back of her ATV. She parks neatly by the boating shed, climbs out, takes one look at whatever's on Scottie and Lottie's faces, and groans.

"Grey!" Erika bellows, voice carrying easily down to the dock. "Put some damn shorts on! Everyone out of the water, ten minute break, drink some water and pee in the bathroom, not the lake."

Kids run for the coolers and the toilets, yelling cheerfully and leaving a wide space around Erika. Jean saunters slowly up the beach to join them. She's poured herself into the yellow suit today, and her red whistle hangs around her neck and bounces against her chest as she walks. Lottie notices, and then mildly despises herself for noticing. Jean stops just inside Erika's personal space bubble to beam at her face. "Thank you for caring so much about the children's hydration," she says, cheerfully. She reaches past Erika and brushes her body along Erika's muscled bare arm - Lottie gulps, from her seat on top of the picnic table - before delicately picking up a pair of green board shorts draped from the railing. Erika's eyes never seem leave Jean's face. 

"Hydration is very important," Erika agrees. "So is sun protection, and setting a good example of appropriate camp gear for the kids. Please add shorts to your... ensemble, in the name of fewer kids showing up in Beast's office with very awkward posterior sunburns."

Jean laughs - it's tinkling and beautiful and like sunshine - and winks at Erika. "For the sake of Beast's delicate sensibilities, then," she says, and shimmies the green shorts up her long, long legs.

"Thank you," says Erika, dry as dust. "I'm going to install the new rudder now." She backs away from the lifeguard and busies herself with the ATV's tie ropes.

Jean aims a cute finger salute at Lottie, ruffles Scottie's short brown hair, and saunters back down to the dock. "Kids, come back down to the lake when you're ready," she calls over her shoulder, and flicks the red fall of her long hair in a perfect arc.

Lottie glances at Scottie's burning red face and then hugs the kid around her skinny shoulders. "Again, my dear, I do understand. But you are seventeen and I am her boss, so let's just be grateful that Erika's willpower is literally made of iron, okay?" Scottie groans in embarrassment and goes to hide among the life jackets. 

Lottie goes to peer around Erika's shoulder and assist her by asking things like, "is that a wrench?" and "what were you doing that tore the rudder off last week, anyway?" until Erika makes her go back to the office.

\-----

Thursday night brings a certain... looseness of standards. By eleven p.m., every unit is done with evening medicine, Lottie has dried the tears of seven extremely homesick kids and shooed them back to their camp sites, the night hike group has been rescued by Erika with a backpack full of flashlights, Beast has talked to three counselors about their various embarrassing rashes and given all of them hydro-cortisone cream regardless, and Jean has been convinced to sing a very sweet lullaby over the radio for the six homesick kids who apparently lied to Lottie when they said they felt okay now. 

Lottie considers feeling bitter, and then she considers the bottle of lemon vodka in her office mini-fridge. Vodka wins. "Beast?" she calls to her office-mate. "Drinks?"

Beast emerges from the Infirmary and sinks gratefully into the admin office sofa. "Yes, please," she sighs. She pulls her glasses off the tip of her nose and sets them on the bookshelf of ancient merit badge books and newer camp policy manuals, rolling her shoulders under her blue camp sweatshirt.

Lottie fetches two bottles of Arizona iced tea, pours an inch or three of tea off into the sink, and adds vodka back up to the very top, swirling to mix. She hands one to Beast and takes a deep drink of her own. The office door bangs open, and Erika strides inside, still wearing her gray reflective windbreaker. Lottie tries not to look guilty about the bottle in her hand.

"Vodka night?" asks Erika, shedding the windbreaker and then pulling her sweaty camp t-shirt off over her head. Lottie gulps, and turns away; Erika in just a sports bra is firmly in the NO category, at least until summer is over and they are not relying on each other professionally single every day. She cheats and peeks through her eyelashes, though: Erika is pulling a comfortably worn burgundy raglan sweater on now, and tugging it down over her simply ridiculous abdominal muscles. "I can see the need." 

"Want some?" asks Lottie. Does she sound breathless? She might sound breathless.

"Yes, please. Straight."

Also, there was that. Sighing, Lottie climbed out of the sofa - squashy and at least thirty years old, it was perfectly comfortable until one tried to leave it - and poured a healthy measure into a blue enameled camp mug with their logo on the side. She brought the mug to Erika, who was straddling an office chair backwards. Instead of squeezing between two other women on a small sofa, Lottie reminded herself. "Here you go," she offers, and Erika takes the mug from her hand, fingers brushing against Lottie's. Lottie shivers and retreats back to the sofa. "How was the night hike?"

Erika takes a long drink before responding. "As per usual, Ororo was so inspirational about the magic of the night sky and having faith that the moon will light the way that all the ten-to-twelve year olds bravely left their flashlights on the unit house porch. It's a full moon. There's plenty of light to see the trail. They got a mile out, and then armadillos happened."

Beast giggles into her tea.

"The sound of them running through the brush creeps out all the kids, and then the one kid starts crying, and then more kids are crying, and Ororo can't handle human emotion all that well, so she radios for backup." Erika slouches down further, chair back under her rather admirable biceps, which can't be comfortable.

"I thought Lorna was going with her tonight? And Jubilee?" Their green-haired orienteering counselor only worked part-time, but she shared some of Erika's iron steadiness while having a much better sense of humor. That is to say, she had a sense of humor. And Jubilee was great with kids, despite only being sixteen.

"Lorna had to drive home - something about her husband injuring himself during a hula-hooping contest - and Jubilee traded with Remy. She's helping with the equestrians tonight."

"I thought Remy and Rogue were dating?" asked Beast, peeling the label off the bottle with her bright blue fingernails. "As of last week, at least, with Remy's pinkeye scare."

Erika snorts. "Never have I derived so much enjoyment from overhearing someone's ignorance about STIs."

"Schadenfreude," murmurs Lottie. "You're so bloody German it hurts, sometimes."

Erika tips up the mug in salute. "Anyway, Ororo thought Remy would be enough backup - insert your own joke about that Gambit not paying off, I'm too tired - and Sue was so desperate for her night off that she clocked out as soon as Remy arrived."

Lottie sighed. Technically, two-deep leadership was sufficient. Practically, taking eighteen kids into the woods in the middle of the night required at least four adults and/or Logan. 

Erika takes another long drink. "I think Ororo would've pulled them together eventually, but Remy took them on a 'short cut' back to the unit, and they ran into a bear."

Lottie was getting that very specific headache again; she drinks more tea and rubs her temple. 

Beast slumped down a little more comfortably into the sofa, folding her legs into pretzel shapes. "I presume black bear, I presume startled and not aggressive, and thank you for not timing that as I was drinking."

Erika finishes her vodka, and points to the bottle still standing at Lottie's elbow. Lottie considers getting up, and then grabs the bottle and just leans as far forward as she can. Erika seems frozen for a handful of seconds, and then she scoots the office chair six inches closer and gingerly takes the bottle.

Beast mutters, "oh, my stars and garters." Beast only ever curses when she drinks, and even then she sounds like an elderly librarian. Lottie twists around to stare at her. Erika makes a weird little noise. Beast sighs. "Lottie, your sweater is all twisted up. Acrylic cardigan, acrylic sofa, static cling."

Lottie glances down, sees most of her own pink bra above the neckline of her sweater, and blushes. "Oh," and she tugs to get the sweater turned around the right way again. "Sorry, I didn't notice, what with the - bears." She has to squirm a little against the sofa to tug the hem down to cover her stomach again, and then oops, she's pulled too far and her cleavage is showing again. She tugs her sweater back up, feeling clumsy. "I think the vodka is working," she observes, wryly, and then looks up, "oh, Erika, you've gone all flushed. We should cut you off, I think."

Beast is grinning toothily. "Oh, no, this is far too much fun. Go back to the bear story, Erika, and have some more vodka."

Erika coughs a little, a does pour herself more vodka, slinging it back before continuing gruffly, "Yes, just a black bear, and it probably would have walked away, except they all started screaming and Remy threw pinecones at it. Or so I was told. I heard the screaming and ran to their location - we need to do more trail maintenance out there - and it was standing on its hind legs and sniffing at them."

"What did you do?" asks Lottie, leaning forward again. Bear attacks were so rare in this part of the country!

Erika shrugs. "I pulled out my Maglite and got between the girls and the bear. I told them to back slowly down the path, getting them out of the bushes and grass, and then - I growled at the bear."

Lottie clasps her hands together under her chin."Oh," she breathes.

Beast is chuckling again. "I need Nightcrawler to drink with us more often," she muses. "My wordplay isn't up to this. Was this your small Maglite, or your eighteen inch long steel rod that just happens to emit light from one end?"

"The large Maglight," says Erika, confused.

"So you got in front of a bear - hefted an eighteen-inch rod in your hands - thrust - no, no, I need Klara for this, I'm no good at dirty jokes." Beast climbs out of the sofa. "I'm going to go text Nightcrawler and giggle a bunch and then go to bed. Erika, come sit on the sofa, my back hurts just looking at you." She waves her hands until Erika complies, sinking gingerly into the cushion and refusing to lean back. "Good. I'm leaving now. Lottie, don't you have questions for Erika? Remember to check on your sweater occasionally." Still chuckling and clutching the last of her tea, Beast wanders back to the bunk room.

"Um," says Lottie. Erika is a lot closer now, and she looks - confused. "Beast gets weird when she drinks, sometimes. Weirder."

"I noticed."

"That was really brave, though! You confronted a bear for our campers!"

Erika looks uncomfortable. "It immediately ran away. Once the kids were no longer all around it." 

"Still," says Lottie, dreamily. 

It's a bit of a shame that they're so tired - Erika yawns, and Lottie yawns, and then she excuses herself to bed and lies in the dark, listening to the cicadas and wondering if she's a coward or just prudent.

\----- 

Nightcrawler makes a lot of jokes about Erika's eighteen-inch steel rod at breakfast the next morning, in her own German accent, which leads to Erika saying something very sharp and Klara making the shape of the cross, rueful but still amused.

\-----

Lottie makes her afternoon rounds of the Camp in her putt-putt golf cart. The Survival Unit is supposed to be working on knots today. It's a merit badge requirement, and a more-optimistic version of Charlotte Xavier from six months ago had promised that all campers who attended this session would complete said merit badge. Current!Lottie thinks past!Charlotte was insane.

Sure enough, Logan's campers are not working on their knot proficiency. They are - apparently - building a treehouse, leader nowhere in sight. She sighs and gets out of the cart. "Terry, what is going on?" she calls, in the direction of the most recognizable hair. 

"Oh!" Terry squeaks. "Miss Professor! We're - uh. We borrowed helmets from the stables for hard hats, we're being safe!"

... yes, half the unit does appear to be wearing stolen English riding helmets.

"And Logan is - where?" Lottie asks, rubbing her temple.

"Yo," says a voice from above, and then Logan - shirtless, in a sports bra and cargo shorts - rappels down from the oak tree, belayed by - oh, Klara. At least there are two nominal adults here.

Lottie stares at her oldest unit leader. "Three questions, Logan." 

"Only three, darlin?" Logan has a four-inch long climbing spike in her mouth, held like a cigarette, and is wearing a climbing harness slung low around her hips. 

"One. Why are you not teaching knots today. Two. Do you remember our conversation about putting campers more than twelve feet in the air after the lashing tournament last month? I thought I was pretty clear on the subject of not doing that? And three, where did you even find a plaid sports bra."

Logan grins up at her. "Belaying knots count toward the merit badge, and so do pulleys and bowline hitches," she says. "The kids ain't allowed above eleven feet until the thing passes my safety inspection," she points at hot pink surveyors tape marking approximately 11 feet up on the main trunk and several nearby trees, "and until it has a functionin' ladder and safety rails and shit, and: Wal-Mart."

Staring up, yes, there are six girls - with hammers and helmets - tied to the tree with safety lines and nailing boards down into what looks like a very stable 20 x 20ft platform. Klara is hanging from a higher branch by her knees and a safety harness and passing down nails. The braces form the shape of a giant X. 

"Wal-Mart," echoes Lottie, weakly.


End file.
